I'm not going to post links, but you can find articles on bankrate and other sites. First there was credit scoring, then insurance scoring and now profitability scoring. Companies mine their databases and give better service to profitable customers and try to drive the others away with horrible service. Turns out less than 20% of the customers bring in the most revenue and the rest require the most resources.
That's a good point, one that can also be turned around. If a bank gives you horrible service, you should do everything you can not to be profitable to them.
I just started a CRM software project at work and found out that my company also uses this stuff. In our case we have an outside contractor that mines our database. So far in the last year we lost customers but were able to increase revenues and turn losses into positive cash flow. This stuff works.
